Govt policies must be sensible, reasonable, focused and responsible

Many people have heard the reasoning for the big water fee hike and the logic being aired in Parliament and many are shaking their heads in disbelief. Do the ministers really believe they are convincing in their arguments and the people are really so daft to accept the reasoning. We have a highly educated population, more than 50% have received tertiary education and any farcical, flimsy or flawed arguments would stand up like a sore thumb. Ministers must be careful and not stand out looking like fools with foolish arguments and thinking they could get away with them.

Just read this piece of statement saying that ‘Water prices were increased substantially to reflect its true scarcity value’ by Masagos. Using the same logic, should not the govt raise the salaries of ministers substantially to reflect its true scarcity value? The scarcity of good political leaders is frightening and a strategic issue, a national security issue too. I just borrow some of the phrases used in Parliament to depict how serious the matter is.

Yes pay the really good minister $10m or more, but this must be done discriminately not like the carpet bombing price of water fee that hit everyone so hard. Some ministers deserved $10m, some not even $100k.  In the case of water, the pricing must be carefully calibrated to be reasonable and sensible and responsible.

Water is a basic necessity and is a must use item by everyone, from the richest to the poorest. And in some cases the poorest need to use more water than the richest. A manual worker would need to bath more and wash more given the nature of his work. A multi millionaire could bathe in perfume or Evian water or no need to bath as he rarely need to sweat under the hot sun. The bedridden would need to be clean. Everyone needs to take their bath in this hold tropical city. Everyone, rich or poor, needs to shit and flush the toilet. How can such acts be punished by high water fees? Don’t bathe, don’t shit, don’t wash and don’t flush?

What is reasonable and sensible is to allocate a fix quantity of water to every individual/household, regardless of wealth, maybe a bit more to the workers, to clean themselves, for personal hygiene. Water is a basic necessity and should be priced as such. Then the axe can come down to bear on those that over used, misused and abused, those that could not appreciate this precious item. Using water reasonably for basic needs must not and cannot be punished with an across the board price hike. Levy progressive and punitive taxes on over usage of water. And I quote Masagos again, ‘Consumers must feel the full price of water’. The difference is that the axe must not be used indiscriminately against everyone.  Not all consumers waste water irresponsibly. Many are actively and responsibly cutting down on their water usage. Why should they also be punished?  If an axe is swung wildly like a mad man, it discredits the person wielding the axe as a mad man, thoughtless and unreasonable.

I do not want to belabour this point. It is common sense. Please be reasonable, be sensible, be focused and be responsible and raise water fees in a calibrated and thoughtful way.  Think a little more. Anyone behaving like a bull in a crystal shop will look like a stubborn and mindless raging bull. No one would respect a mad bull ramming and knocking down everything in its way.

No need to use phrases like scarce resources, strategic issues, national security issue to pull a veil over a flawed pricing policy. It defeats everything being said.

Time to bankrupt the American Empire

Trump has said he wants to build the biggest and most powerful military force ever for the American Empire. They could do that when they were productive and fleecing the Arabs of their oil and the world by printing cheap paper money and selling them to the world as international currency. Can the Americans afford to continue to spend lavishly on military weapons to control the oceans of the world and to maintain 5000 military bases all over the world?

The Arabs are getting wiser and want to control their oil and decide their own future. The world will sooner or later abandon the American dollar as the international currency. The world would soon stop buying cheap and worthless American Treasury bonds and that would be the end of the American dollar and the end of printing easy money. The dollar would be worthless when the world gets wiser to the cheating Americans, getting rich without having to work or pay for it, just printing money.

In the meantime China and Russia can play the game in an arms race. Both Russia and China should spend more on their defence. If China is to roll out 6 aircraft carriers and Russia likewise or even 3, that would make a combined force of at least a dozen aircraft carriers to match the existing 10 American aircraft carriers.

What would the Americans or Trump do? It can be expected that they would want to double their carrier fleet to 20 or more. They need the numbers to maintain their superiority as the world’s hegemon.  Russia and China should not just confine themselves to aircraft carriers and ships, but ICBMs, aircraft, satellites etc etc. This would force to the Americans to spend big and to bankrupt themselves faster.

The Americans no longer have the capacity and the money to compete in an arms race without the industrial complexes to pay for it. They also cannot rely on free or cheap Arab oil or printing more greenbacks. The greenbacks would rapidly run out of its usefulness, become irrevelant and end up like monopoly notes.

Russia and China must proceed to challenge the Americans in an all out arms race to bankrupt the American economy and bring the Empire to its knees. The Americans just cannot afford it. Just keep the defence spending up and let the Americans try to outdo and outperform and outspend the combined forces and defence budget of Russia and China. A 3 times more American strategy to remain aloof and unchallenged would see the Americans huffing and puffing to its own demise.

$600b defence budget and the Trumps wants to spend more. Go ahead and spend. The Russians and Chinese should oblige by providing the reasons and motivation for the Americans to keep spending on defence and make it $1 trillion. That would be nice.

US Destructive Colonialism And Imperialism

US has inherited the mantle of British colonialism and imperialism for almost four hundred years. This destructive British and American colonialism and imperialism plius that of Spain, Portugal, Holland and Russia has either destroyed or cause great damage to many ancient civilization. History will reveal that the natives of North America and South America were not as savage and uncivliae as the invading white men from Europe. Just because the white men were better armed with modern weapons like guns and cannons does not make them more civilise than others. 

Below I quote a passage from an unknown author . Please read it and reflect deeply on the truth of its contents. Those so called selfstyled intellectuals who are history illiterate and like to fawn on white supremacists should go back to school before they write any comments. I am referring to many of those silly intellectuals who are being unreservely highly paid in many of Singapore's institutes of higher learnings and international studies. 

THE JADE PAVILLION 
-------------------------- 

" He felt a familiar rise insight him. Eucliff 
was a good example of how the Chinese were 
being corrupted, their culture eroded, their 
countryside altered by speculative land deals. 
It was the same wherever the British went. 
India, Africa, Malaya, China: whatever they 
saw, they changed - as if that was the natural 
way of things. They did not learn the local 
languages except in order to teach the natives 
English. They built their churches and 
imported their own god annd tried to convert 
the local deities. They eradicated customs 
without having anything better with which to 
replace them. They brought their own 
business practices which they expected to be 
adopted, their own laws to be obeyed, their 
own merchandise to be purchased. They even 
brought their own diseases of influenza and 
gonorrhoea to add to the local scourges. When 
they could not get their own way with the 
natives they ruled by division , pitting tribe 
against tribe, clan against clan, religion 
against religion: when that failed, they 
brought in their troops and their gunboats." 

Southernglory1 

Wednesday, 1st March, 2017

How long does it take to admit a silly mistake?

A few people came to me shaking their heads just to ask why it took 6 long years and wasting so many precious hours of unproductive time to realise that the no lunch break is a total failure from the start? The promise and optimism of some half baked logic that longer hours with no lunch break meant more business,  would increase trading business by 10%, were at best be good for a laugh. Only someone not in the industry could think that such an idea would work when anyone with a couple of years in this business and with a little grey matter would know how silly it was. And it took a whole solid 6 years to admit that it was all an expensive mistake, an unproductive farce.

Then I also heard some clowns still saying that it was a great idea and it did not fail, it was a great success. The no lunch break farce gave SGX a big advantage over other bourses that have to close for lunch. The clown even bragged that if one bought one share in Timbuktu and the market crashed, the buyer of that one share could sell it in SGX without missing a bid while other bourses were closed for lunch.

I must say that I agree with the clown's clever reasoning. We could boast to the world that we have a market that opens a whole full day, so efficient and so convenient for all the traders of the whole wide world to trade here. I would also agree that if the market is open 24 hours, better still, then our aunties and uncles and ah mahs could trade in all the markets all over the world any time they like. They can even wake up in the middle of the night after having a good tip from their dreams to buy shares, and the Singapore market will be there waiting for them.

Come to think of it, the failure of the no lunch break would not have happened if they open the market 24 hours a day non stop. (Oops, I know some disagreed that it was a failure and would still swear that it was a great success.) And business would boom and everyone in the business will be laughing to the bank and no one would be complaining of no business or a waste of time. It must be, 8 hours of business, now 3X8 hours would mean business would triple. As they said, want to do something well, go all the way, no half hearted measures like no lunch break.

Many are cheering that they are having their lunch break back. Please forgive these people for they did not know what they missed and how good it would be, how good it could be, if the market remains open 24 hours a day. The only reason for these folks to be happy for a miserable lunch break, I think, is that they are not talented so unable to appreciate how good no lunch break is for the business. A child in the kindergarten would also be able to work out the arithmetic. The idea is so simplistic! But that is the brilliant part and even simpletons would know that it would work. How can anyone say it would not work or it did not work?

Maybe we need to engage a foreign talent to teach these simple folks how good it is if a market has no lunch break, or better still operates on a non stop 24 hours basis. Give it more time to succeed, keep the no lunch break. 6 years is too short a time for this great idea to bear fruits. Please don’t throw out such a clever idea.

Stupidity has no cure.

A consolation is that the market still has many great innovations that would keep it flourishing and in the pink of health. I particularly like algo trading, computer trading, smaller bid size, can trade one share at a time to improve liquidity and cheaper for children to play with their piggy bank savings. $1 can buy 100 shares. Now isn’t that nice? And main board shares some more. More than 2 billion shares are traded daily, and will be bigger tomorrow. Don't pray pray. See how healthy is the stock market or not? It is growing from strength to strength.

It is such a pity that they are bringing back the lunch break. Now business will surely be adversely affected.

Critics and cynics to be invited to share their disruptive views

The word disruptive is now being floated like a new panacea to cure the ills of everything. I thought I was dreaming when the island’s top 5 govt spokesmen and women proposed that critics/cynics aka disruptors, should be invited to sit in govt boards to share their opposing and disruptive views and ideas. Kishore Mahbubani, Tommy Koh, Chan Heng Chee, Han Fook Kwan and Danny Chan gathered at a seminar organized by the SMU to share their new and disruptive thoughts derived from the success of disruptive technologies. It is time to slay sacred cows and bravely confront the new forces of disruptive change.

Kishore has this to say, ‘We need more naysayers. Singapore cannot take its formulas for success developed over the last 50 years and apply them to the next 50 years, as the world has changed drastically. We need to create new formulas, which you can’t until you attack and challenge every sacred cow. Then you can succeed.’

Heng Chee too agreed with Kishore’s view by adding this, ‘But it is in policies and leadership teams that Singapore needs people willing to challenge authority. more robust internal discussions on policies with a wider range of people from different backgrounds. We need naysayers in leadership teams who can think the unthinkable.’

Tommy Koh, another doyen of Singaporean thought makers did not want to be outdone and added, ‘When we appoint people to boards, we can also appoint challengers who are subversive and who have alternative points of view. That’s the kind of cultural change we want to see. It makes Singapore stronger, not weaker.

I could not believe my eyes reading such disruptive comments from the thinkers of the establishment. I am not alone. Danny Chan, one of the panelists, could not help himself and took a dig at his fellow panelists. ‘You talk so much to me but when the minister is present, in front of him, you’re absolutely silent. This habit stems partly from a fear of looking bad in front of others and of failing.’ Oops, maybe he was referring to the audience.

Danny Chan could not stand the hypocrisy of the session. Maybe the talk shop was just a talk shop without any minister around and the message would be different when a minister is around. Maybe there is really such disruptive talks going around in the circles of natural aristocrats, that it is time to test the unknown and the unthinkable. Disruptive thoughts and disruptors are the new darlings of change, the change agents.

Critics and cynics like Philip Ang, Leong Sze Hean, Cynical Investor, Richard Wan and company may be receiving invitation letters to sit in some govt boards as disruptors to throw spanners into the works and hopefully things would get better. I would not include names of opposition party leaders as it would be too much to take to think that they could be invited. The non political individuals may have a rare and a one in a million chance to see this happening, definitely not those politically connected. I may even add the out of question candidates like Amos Yee and Roy Ngerng.

After saying this, maybe it is just another wet dream, too good to be true. Danny Chan should know better for highlighting the hypocrisy of the talk shop. If only the thought leaders are the decision makers, then there may be a little chance of it happening. For the moment, enjoy the musing.